Re: My year with a 360.

Depending on which format becomes predominant that is. I don't think that
there will be two formats, people will probably tire of it when they want to
get movies they like, but require two different players to watch them. One
format will probably win, and then allow some porting over of the other
format to work with the existing losing foramt.

I remember when DVD players came out, they pretty much covered both -R and
+R formats for playback, but the recorders in the beginning would only cover
one or the other. Now you can get recorders dirt cheap and will use either -
or + format.

Well the peripherals are not mandatory, but they ARE good. I find that the
HD-DVD drive has an incredible picture quality. It remains to be seen how
it looks next to the Blu-ray on the PS3 I'm getting in a few days. I'll
compare King Kong to Talladega Nights and from that decide which format I
want to buy future movies on.

I think it was unavoidable for them to make the 360 very loud because
it's a very powerful machine which means it generates a lot of heat.
For them to make it quiet, I think they would've had to make it more
expensive and bigger. Who knows, maybe it would've required
watercooling and huge heat sinks. I'm sure they would've made it quiet
if they could have for only $400. You can't blame them for using cheap
parts either, because a PC with the same amount of processing power
costs far more. People have always bought consoles because they were
cheap. If you put in high quality parts it'd cost a lot more. Then it
would be a flop. When you combine cheap parts with high heat, that's
probably responsible for a lot of the breakdowns. But that's what you
get in a field where cheap consumers wanna buy something cheap. As for
the expensive peripherals and games, I guess Microsoft is trying to get
back the money they lost on the Xbox 360 console.